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Re: Liberals and Conservatives: Are adherents of the rival ideology evil?

Originally Posted by Removable Mind

I somewhat,to a whole lot, agree -depending on the individual. I just read where Stephen Hawkin said that his wish for humanity is that they trade in their violent nature for empathy. Noooot gooonnnna happen.

Evil is what it is, but I usually associate with the word "control". Whether it be to control one's (or everybody's) mind, body, or the time of death.

I kinda think of evil as a metaphor for an intense raw emotion of hate/jealously/rage that can consume and manifest itself into physical action or deed. It's how we control those evil emotions that differentiates us from the primitive savage to civilized thinking beings, imo.

I dunno, does empathy have to be taught or does it come naturally? It seems like it has to be taught and requires more thought. So maybe you're right...."not gonna happen."

Re: Liberals and Conservatives: Are adherents of the rival ideology evil?

Originally Posted by Moot

I kinda think of evil as a metaphor for an intense raw emotion of hate/jealously/rage that can consume and manifest itself into physical action or deed. It's how we control those evil emotions that differentiates us from the primitive savage to civilized thinking beings, imo.

I dunno, does empathy have to be taught or does it come naturally? It seems like it has to be taught.

Well, not much to disagree with in your description. Seems as most of us do control our evil emotions or intents. But there seems like a hell of a lot more folks who can't.

Most are born with some degree of empathy, its really a nature/nurture thing. But sociopaths and in particular psychopaths don't have any elements of empathy at all...born or taught. Dunno, but whatever its origin, I agree with Hawkin. It would be a kinder, gentler world.

Re: Liberals and Conservatives: Are adherents of the rival ideology evil?

Originally Posted by JasperL

Yes, of course, but the point is that fear of randomly being mowed down for your car is a generalized fear shared by EVERYONE in your community. But if he's killed because he's Jewish, the crime victim isn't random at all - the victim was chosen because he's Jewish, and the only people who will fear similar violence are other Jews. Your Christian neighbors don't need to worry about it because they're not Jews.

We personally know a victim of a hate crime, and there is a difference. He is a friend of my wife's and has dark skin. He was attacked by a crazed knife wielding maniac as he sat in a waiting area of a train station, and the motive was that he looked foreign - "This is my (expletive) country. I will kill you." It's changed him and his family in ways that a random crime of violence doesn't because the motive was NOT a random one - he was targeted because of the color of his skin, which is shared by his wife and children. They have a (perceived at least) target on their backs that others who aren't dark skinned simply don't have. AND they have the more generalized fear of random violence.

And you also need to at least recognize lynching of blacks in the South had as part of the motive the goal of terrorizing blacks. Whites in Alabama simply didn't need to fear being lynched - they were white and the KKK and other white supremacists didn't target whites, or if they did target whites, it was ONLY those whites who sympathized with blacks - e.g. the civil rights workers killed in Mississippi. Those crimes were simply different than random attacks or even random murders - the purpose was to terrorize a segment of the population. They would be obvious 'hate crimes' in the current era.

Fascinating. And 5 years ago a good friend of mine was in her house one night alone with her 10 year old daughter asleep when some high school boys from a neighboring town broke into the house in the middle of the night, and hacked her to bits with a machete, and permanently maimed and scarred her daughter who they believed was dead. Her husband was away on business. She went to bed as any normal mother would, assuming that she and her daughter were safe in their own locked home. It was a thrill killing by former boy scouts in a house selected totally at random.

To this day I wake up at night when my husband is away on business and I so much as hear one of our cats move. And trust me, my friend didn't die any easier because she wasn't the victim of a hate crime but was instead the victim of - what was it Zinthaniel called it - opportunistic killers.

Spare me the bit on fear. It has nothing to do with whites during the period when blacks were getting lynched in the south. I'm talking 2015.

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. ~W.C. Fields

Re: Liberals and Conservatives: Are adherents of the rival ideology evil?

Originally Posted by Nilly

Fixed that. What you think is evil is not what the rest of the world thinks is evil, Bob.

Which of these do you deny are evil?

Slavery and racism

The needless killing of innocent children.

Sexual immorality

The abuse of harmful drugs

Taking the side of violent criminals, against that of honest citizens

Taking the side of foreign invaders, against that of the rightful citizens of the nation

Encouraging and rewarding idleness and parasitism, while punishing and discouraging productivity and self-reliance

The five great lies of the Left Wrong:
We can be Godless and free. • “Social justice” through forced redistribution of wealth. • Silencing religious opinions counts as “diversity”. • Freedom without moral and personal responsibility. • Civilization can survive the intentional undermining of the family.

Re: Liberals and Conservatives: Are adherents of the rival ideology evil?

Originally Posted by Bob Blaylock

Which of these do you deny are evil?

Slavery and racism

The needless killing of innocent children.

Sexual immorality

The abuse of harmful drugs

Taking the side of violent criminals, against that of honest citizens

Taking the side of foreign invaders, against that of the rightful citizens of the nation

Encouraging and rewarding idleness and parasitism, while punishing and discouraging productivity and self-reliance

Evil has no objective meaning. Those things are typically found unacceptable within a certain society, but certainly not all societies. You're just giving an opinion, based on emotion, that you have yet to justify objectively.

There is nothing demonstrably true that religion can provide the world that cannot be achieved more rationally through entirely secular means.

Re: Liberals and Conservatives: Are adherents of the rival ideology evil?

Originally Posted by Cephus

Evil has no objective meaning. Those things are typically found unacceptable within a certain society, but certainly not all societies. You're just giving an opinion, based on emotion, that you have yet to justify objectively.

Which only goes to show the futility of moral relativism. If good and evil is subject to the whims of individual or even cultural tastes, then the distinction becomes meaningless.

Was the Nazi extermination of Jews and other “undesirables” evil? I think most today universally recognize it as one of the greatest examples of pure evil in recent history, but by the [lack of any meaningful] standard that you seem to advocate, it couldn't be evil, because it was approved by the society in which it occurred, and allowed by the laws thereof.

The five great lies of the Left Wrong:
We can be Godless and free. • “Social justice” through forced redistribution of wealth. • Silencing religious opinions counts as “diversity”. • Freedom without moral and personal responsibility. • Civilization can survive the intentional undermining of the family.

Re: Liberals and Conservatives: Are adherents of the rival ideology evil?

Originally Posted by ashurbanipal

Do the voting results not seem a little odd to anyone?

I can't see the voting results because I didn't vote. There is no choice on the poll options that apply to me. I do believe there are aspects of liberalism that are evil in their effect. That, however, is not saying that most who promote liberalism are evil. But some are. I do not see any aspect of conservatism as I define it in modern day America as evil, but I do believe it is possible to use conservatism in a way that is evil and there are people who do that.

People who knowingly and deliberately promote programs or policies that they know will specifically benefit themselves while harming others in unconscionable and indefensible ways are evil. The programs and policies they push that accomplish that are also evil. There are people left and right of center who are capable of that.

Those who refuse to see, consider, or acknowledge that are not necessarily evil. They are simply ignorant and gullible ideologues.

"I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." --Benjamin Franklin 1776

Re: Liberals and Conservatives: Are adherents of the rival ideology evil?

Originally Posted by Bob Blaylock

Which of these do you deny are evil?

Slavery and racism

The needless killing of innocent children.

Sexual immorality

The abuse of harmful drugs

Taking the side of violent criminals, against that of honest citizens

Taking the side of foreign invaders, against that of the rightful citizens of the nation

Encouraging and rewarding idleness and parasitism, while punishing and discouraging productivity and self-reliance

Sexual 'immorality' and 'harmful' drug use. Neither of which I would consider evil.

The rest of the list is a strawman you've constructed as liberals don't really advocate for any of those. The way you've worded them is also a complete misrepresentation of the situations that you've constructed in your head

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK